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Government. Headed by Prince G. E. L’vov, a landowner with a record of ser-

vice to the zemstvos, it was broadly representative of professional and business

interests and liberal, even mildly populist in its politics. The only organised

political force within the new government were the Kadets, a liberal party

increasingly deﬁned by its intransigent defence of the imperial-national state.

In its manifesto of 2 March, the Provisional Government committed itself to

a far-reaching programme of civil and political rights, promising to convoke a

Constituent Assembly to determine the shape of the future polity. It said noth-

ing, however, about the burning issues of war and land. This was in keeping

with the Kadet view that the February events constituted a political but not a

social revolution.

In a bid to widen their base of support, the Duma politicians pressed the

Petrograd Soviet to join the new government. Only Aleksandr Kerensky, a

radical lawyer, agreed to do so, proclaiming that he would be hostage of

the ‘democracy’ within the bourgeois government. The rest of the left-wing

Mensheviks and SRs on the Executive Committee (EC) of the Soviet rejected

the invitation to join the government since they believed Russia was under-

going a ‘bourgeois’ revolution and was destined to undergo a long period of

capitalist development and parliamentary democracy before it would be ripe

for socialism. At the same time, they rejected calls, such as that which came

from the Vyborg district committee of the Bolshevik Party, to make the Soviet

the provisional government, since they feared that this might provoke conser-

vative elements in the army to crush the revolution.

On 2 March, therefore,

the Soviet agreed that it would support the Provisional Government in so far

as it carried out a programme of democratic reform but would not be bound

by its domestic or foreign policies.

Thus was born ‘dual power’, wherein the

Provisional Government enjoyed formal authority but the Soviet EC enjoyed

real power, by virtue of its inﬂuence over the garrison and workers in transport

and communications and general support among the populace. Some have

cast doubt on the adequacy of the ‘dual power’ formulation, correctly pointing

out that even at this stage real power lay with the workers and soldiers rather

than the EC.

Nevertheless, it has the merit of reminding us that from the out-

set the new revolutionary order expressed the deep social division between

the ‘democracy’ and propertied society.

6 David A. Longley, ‘Divisions in the Bolshevik Party in March 1917’, Soviet Studies 24, 1

(1972–3): 61–76.

7 Petrogradskii Sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v 1917 godu, vol. i (Leningrad: Nauka,

1991), p. 59.

8 T. Hasegawa, ‘The Problem of Power in the February Revolution’, Canadian Slavonic

Papers 14 (1972): 611–32.

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Outside Petrograd dual power was less in evidence. In most places a broad

alliance of social groups formed committees of public organisations that

ejected police and tsarist ofﬁcials, maintained order and food supply and later

oversaw the democratisation of the municipal dumas and rural zemstvos.In

March, 79 such committees were set up at provincial level, 651 at county (uezd)

level and over 9,000 at township (volost’) level.

The committee in faraway

Irkutsk was typical in deﬁning its task as ‘carrying the revolution to its con-

clusion and strengthening the foundations of freedom and popular power’.

Unlike the soviets, whose rising popularity would soon undermine them, the

committees were not deﬁned by political partisanship. In the township-level

committees in Saratov province, for example, no fewer than three-quarters of

members were non-party.

In seeking to establish its authority in the local-

ities, the Provisional Government chose to bypass these committees and to

appoint provincial and county commissars, many of whom were chairs of

county zemstvos who hailed from landed or middle-class backgrounds and

who did not command popular favour. Grass-roots pressure to democratise

zemstvos and municipal dumas soon built up: by mid-October, dumas had been

re-elected in 650 out of 798 towns.

The democratisation of the zemstvos and

the rise of the soviets spelt the end of the public committees. The Provisional

Government never established effective authority in the localities and, as the

social and political crisis deepened in summer 1917, power became ever more

fragmented. In a crucial sphere such as food supply, for example, the govern-

ment supply organs, working in tandem with the co-operatives, competed

with the respective food-supply commissions of the soviet, the local garrison,

trade unions and factory committees.

In the countryside the revolution swept away land captains, township elders

and village constables and replaced them with township committees elected

by the peasants.

By July these were ubiquitous – there being over 15,000

9 G. A. Gerasimenko, ‘Transformatsiia vlasti v Rossii v 1917 g.’, Otechestvennaia istoriia,

1997,no.1: 63.

10 G. A. Gerasimenko, Pervyi akt narodovlastiia v Rossii: obshchestvennye ispolnitel’nye komitety

1917 g. (Moscow: NIKA, 1992), p. 132.

11 Ibid., p. 106.

12 Kh. M. Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki i ikh politicheskie protivnikiv 1917 godu (Leningrad: Lenizdat,

1973), p. 365.

13 The discussion of the peasants here and below is based on: J. L. H. Keep, The Russian

Revolution: A Study in Mass Mobilization (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 3; Graeme J. Gill,

Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1979); John Chan-

non, ‘The Peasantry in the Revolutions of 1917’, in E. R. Frankel et al. (eds.), Revolution

in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 105–

30; Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917–21)

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), ch. 2; Maureen Perrie, ‘The Peasants’, in Robert Service

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townships across the country – and later some adopted the appellation ‘soviet’.

The government attempted to strengthen its authority by setting up land and

food committees at township level, but these were soon taken over by the

peasants. Meanwhile the authority of the village gathering was strengthened,

as younger sons, landless labourers, village intelligentsia (scribes, teachers, vets

and doctors) and even some women began to participate in its deliberations.

The revolution thus substantially reduced the degree of interference in village

life by external authority and after October the peasants came to associate this

unprecedented degree of self-government with soviet power.

In the course of spring 1917, some 700 soviets were formed, involving around

200,000 deputies.

By October, 1,429 soviets functioned in Russia, 706 of which

consisted of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, 235 of workers’, soldiers’ and peas-

ants’ deputies, 455 of peasants’ deputies, and 33 of soldiers’ deputies.

They

represented about one-third of the population. Soviets saw themselves as rep-

resenting the ‘revolutionary democracy’, a bloc of social groups comprising

workers, soldiers and peasants, and often stretching to include white-collar

employees and professionals, such as teachers, journalists, lawyers or doc-

tors, and in some cases representatives of ethnic minorities. The Omsk soviet

described itself as the ‘sole representative of the local proletariat and of the

general labouring masses of the local population and army’.

The basic prin-

ciples of soviet democracy were that deputies were elected directly by and

were subject to immediate recall by those they represented. The Mensheviks

and SRs, who were the leading force in the soviets until autumn, saw their

function as being to exercise ‘control’ over local government in the interests

of revolutionary democracy. Soviets generally did not see themselves as rivals

to elected organs of local government and championed the democratisation

of dumas and the speedy election of a Constituent Assembly. In practice, they

soon took on tasks of practical administration, concerning themselves with

everything from fuel supply, to education, to policing.

In a small number of

cases, soviets declared themselves the sole authority in a particular locality: in

Kronstadt the soviet, which consisted of 96 Bolsheviks, 96 non-party deputies,

(ed.), Society and Politics in the Russian Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 12–34;

Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets (London: UCL Press, 1996), ch. 5.

14 Gerasimenko, ‘Transformatsiia’, p. 64.

15 N. N. Smirnov, ‘The Soviets’, in Edward Acton et al. (eds.), Critical Companion to the

Russian Revolution, 1914–1921 (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 432.

16 Gosarkhiv Omskoi oblasti, f. R-662,op.1,d.8,l.1.

17 Israel Getzler, ‘The Soviets as Agents of Democratisation’, in Frankel et al., Revolution

in Russia,pp.17–33.

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73 Left SRs, 13 Mensheviks and 7 anarchists, caused a furore when it refused to

recognise the government in May.

The aspirations of the masses

Liberty and democracy werethe watchwords of the February Revolution.New

symbols of liberty, of republic and of justice, drawn mainly from the French

Revolution and the European socialist and labour movements, made their

appearance. ‘Free Russia’ was personiﬁed as a beautiful woman in national

costume or as a heroine breaking the chains of tsarism, wearing a laurel wreath,

or bearing a shield.

These symbols were embraced by all who identiﬁed the

February Revolution with liberation from autocracy.

Red, once a colour to

cause the propertied classes to tremble, became an emblem of the revolu-

tion.

All agreed that, in order to realise freedom, they must organise collec-

tively. ‘Organise!’ screamed placards and orators on the streets, and as people

organised, interest in politics grew exponentially. John Reed, the American

journalist who later came to witness the revolution, observed: ‘For months

in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street-corner was a public tribune.

In railway-trains, street-cars, always the spurting up of impromptu debate,

everywhere.’

Yet from the ﬁrst, the scope of the democratic revolution was in dispute.

For the privileged classes, the overthrow of autocracy had been an act of self-

preservation necessitated by the need to bring victory in war and engender a

renaissance of the Russian people. For the lower classes, liberty and democracy

signalled nothing short of a social revolution that would entail the compre-

hensive destruction of the old order and the construction of a new way of

life in accordance with justice and freedom. Even peasants proclaimed them-

selves free citizens and showed a rudimentary familiarity with notions of a

constitution, a democratic republic, civil and political rights. Yet for them, as

for the lower classes in general, democracy was principally about solving their

18 Israel Getzler, Kronstadt, 1917–1921:The Fate of a Soviet Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1983), p. 66.

19 P. K. Kornakov, ‘Simvolika i ritualy revoliutsii 1917 g.’, in Anatomiia revoliutsii: 1917 god v

revoliutsii – massy, partii, vlast’ (St Petersburg: Glagol’, 1994), pp. 356–65; Richard Stites,

‘The Role of Ritual and Symbols’, in Acton et al., Critical Companion,pp.565–71.

20 Figes and Kolonitskii, Interpreting,p.69.

21 B. I. Kolonitskii, Simvoly vlasti i bor’ba za vlast’ (St Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001),

pp. 250–84.

22 John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 40.

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pressing socio-economic problems and only secondarily about questions of

law and political representation.

There were around nine million men in uniform in 1917 and soldiers were

to become a force of huge importance in promoting the social revolution.

Though they lacked the high level of organisation of workers, they were crucial

in weakening the Provisional Government, in politicising the peasantry and,

after October, in establishing soviet power. Soldiers and sailors greeted the

downfall of the tsar with joy, seeing in it a signal to overthrow the oppressive

command structure of the tsarist army. Tyrannical ofﬁcers were removed and

sometimes killed – lynchings being worst in the Baltic Fleet, with Kronstadt

sailors killing about ﬁfty ofﬁcers. Soldiers celebrated the fact that they were

now citizens of free Russia, and demanded an end to degrading treatment, the

right to meet and petition, and improvements in condition and pay. Crucially,

they formed committees at each level of the army hierarchy. This drive to

democratise relations between ofﬁcers and men was authorised on 1 March by

Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Soviet, which proved to be its most radical under-

taking. General M. V. Alekseev pronounced the Order ‘the means by which the

army I command will be destroyed’.

In practice, the soldiers’ committees

were dominated by more educated elements, including non-commissioned

ofﬁcers, medical and clerical staff, who had little desire to sabotage the oper-

ational effectiveness of the army. Most soldiers wanted a speedy peace, but

did not wish to expose free revolutionary Russia to Austro-German attack. At

the same time, if democratisation did not mean – at least in the spring and

early summer – the disintegration of the army as a ﬁghting force, it was clear

that it could no longer be relied upon to perform its customary function of

suppressing domestic disorder.

Industrial workers were the most politicised, organised and strategically

positioned of all social groups in 1917.

Something like two-thirds were recent

23 Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917. Documents, trans. Marian Schwartz (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 10, 13.

24 The following is based on A. K. Wildman, The End of the Russian Imperial Army: The Old

Army and the Soldiers’ Revolt (March–April 1917) (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1980); Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Baltic Fleet: War and Politics, February 1917–April 1918

(London: Macmillan, 1978); Evan Mawdsley, ‘Soldiers and Sailors’, in Service (ed.), Society

and Politics,pp.103–19; Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (London: Hodder

and Stoughton, 1975); Howard White, ‘1917 in the Rear Garrison’, in Linda Edmondson

and Peter Waldron (eds.), Economy and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1860–1930

(London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 152–68.

25 R. P. Browder and A. F. Kerensky (eds.), The Russian Provisional Government, 1917, vol. ii

(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 851.

26 The following is based on Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution in Russia

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); D. H. Kaiser (ed.), The Workers’ Revolution

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recruits to industry, either peasant migrants or women who had taken up

jobs in the war industries. Yet this was a working class deﬁned by an unusual

degree of class consciousness. From the end of the nineteenth century, a

layer of so-called ‘conscious’ workers, drawn mainly from the ranks of skilled,

literate young men, had emerged, partly under the tutelage of revolutionary

intellectuals, who provided leadership in moments of conﬂict, and, crucially,

served as the conduit through which class politics touched a wider lower-class

constituency. During the revolution workers determined that the overthrow

of tsarism be followed by the overthrow of ‘autocracy’ on the shop ﬂoor.

Hated foremen and administrators were driven out, the old rule books were

torn up and factory committees were set up, especially among metalworkers,

to represent workers’ interests to management. Russian industrialists were

not as well organised as their employees, mainly because they were divided

by region and branch of industry. Moscow textile manufacturers favoured a

more liberal industrial relations policy than the metalworking and engineering

manufacturers of Petrograd, who had been far more supportive of tsarism,

because of their dependence on state orders.

For a brief period following

February, sections of employers came out in favour of a liberal policy that

entailed a formal eight-hour day(perhaps the most pressing demand of labour),

improved wages and conditions, arbitration of industrial disputes, and co-

responsibility of factory committees in regulating workplace relations.

The

factory committees took on a wide range of tasks, including overseeing hiring

and ﬁring, guarding the factory, labour discipline and organising food supplies.

They were the most inﬂuential of the plethora of labour organisations that

emerged. Signiﬁcantly, they were the ﬁrst to register the shift in lower-class

support away from the moderate socialists to the Bolsheviks. In late May the

ﬁrst conference of Petrograd factory committees overwhelmingly passed a

Bolshevik resolution on control of the economy.

in Russia, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Diane Koenker, Moscow

Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); R. A. Wade,

Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Uni-

versity Press, 1984).

27 Ziva Galili, ‘Commercial-Industrial Circles in Revolution: The Failure of “Industrial Pro-

gressivism” ’, in Frankel et al., Revolution in Russia,pp.188–216; P. V. Volobuev, Proletariat

i burzhuaziia v 1917 godu (Moscow: Mysl’, 1964).

28 V. I. Cherniaev, ‘Rabochii kontrol’ i al’ternativy ego razvitiia v 1917 g.’, in Rabochie i

rossiiskoe obshchestvo: vtoraia polovina XIX-nachalo XX veka (St Petersburg: Glagol’, 1994),

pp. 164–77;D.O.Churakov,Russkaia revoliutsiia i rabochee samoupravlenie 1917 (Moscow:

AIRO-XX, 1998), pp. 35–41.

29 S. A. Smith, Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–18 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1983), chs. 3–4.

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In 1917 gender was not a category of political mobilisation in the same way

as class, youth or nationality. Despite their role in triggering the events that

led to the February Revolution, women soon found themselves on the mar-

gins of revolutionary politics.

In March middle-class feminists mobilised to

ensure that women received the vote; but as soon as this was granted, their

movement lost inﬂuence. Most of its leaders were nationalistically inclined and

some went on to form the women’s ‘death battalions’, the only instance of

women playing a combat role in the First World War. Many educated women

threw themselves into work in educational and cultural organisations, the co-

operatives and political parties. The one partial exception to the rule of women

not organising as women were food riots in which mainly lower-class house-

wives, especially soldiers’ wives, clashed with traders and shopkeepers over the

price and availability of goods and with local governments over the miserable

allowances paid to combatants’ families.

Women workers, who comprised a

third of the workforce, participated in strikes and trade unions, but were not

prominent in the labour movement, partly because of their responsibilities as

wives and mothers, partly because of their lower levels of literacy and partly

because they were perceived as ‘backward’ by labour organisers, who unwit-

tingly forged an organisational culture which marginalised them. Despite the

fact that the Bolsheviks would not countenance separate organisations for

working women, they did most to group them into class organisations, thanks

to the initiative of a few leading women, such as Aleksandra Kollontai.

the Constituent Assembly elections, interestingly, turn-out was higher among

rural women than among rural men (77 per cent against 70 per cent).

The politics of war, March to July 1917

Despite the talk of ‘unity of all the vital forces of the nation’, the issue of war

divided the Soviet leaders and the Provisional Government. The minister of

30 The following is based on: Linda H. Edmondson, Feminism in Russia, 1900–1917 (London:

Heinemann, 1984); Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1978); Richard Abraham, ‘Mariia L. Bochkareva and the

Russian Amazons of 1917’, in Linda Edmondson (ed.), Women and Society in Russia and

the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 124–44.

31 Barbara Alpern Engel, ‘Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World

War One’, Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 696–721.

32 Moira Donald,‘BolshevikActivity amongWorking Women ofPetrograd in 1917’, Interna-

tional Review of Social History 27 (1982): 129–60; Beatrice Farnsworth, Aleksandra Kollontai:

Socialism, Feminism, and the Bolshevik Revolution (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University

Press, 1980).

33 L. G. Protasov, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie: istoriia rozhdeniia i gibeli (Moscow:

Rosspen, 1997), p. 233.

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The Revolutions of 1917–1918

foreign affairs, Pavel Miliukov, typiﬁed government thinking in believing that

the revolution would unleash a surge of patriotic feeling that would carry

Russia to victory in the war. By contrast, the Soviet leaders wished to see a

‘democratic’ peace entailing the renunciation of annexations and indemnities,

although pending that, they were anxious not to leave Russia vulnerable to

Austro-German attack. It was the Georgian Menshevik, I. G. Tsereteli, who

crafted a compromise, known as ‘revolutionary defencism’, designed to uphold

national defence while pressing the Provisional Government to work for a

comprehensive peace settlement.

However, on 18 April Miliukov sent a note

to the Allies that spoke of prosecution of war to ‘decisive victory’ and gave a

heavy hint that Russia would stand by the terms of the secret treaties, which

included annexations and indemnities. Soldiers and workers came out onto the

streets of the capital to demand Miliukov’s resignation, and Bolsheviks bore

banners declaring ‘Down with the Provisional Government’. With Miliukov’s

resignation on 2 May, Prince L’vov pressed members of the Soviet EC to join

a coalition government. Tsereteli managed to overcome the reluctance of

Mensheviks to participate in a ‘bourgeois’ government, convincing them that

this would strengthen the chances for peace. Socialists accepted six places in

the new government, alongside eight ‘bourgeois’ representatives. It proved to

be a ruinous decision, since in the eyes of the masses it identiﬁed the moderate

socialists with government policy.

The Mensheviks and SRs dominated the popular movement in spring

and summer 1917. In late May 537 SR delegates confronted a mere fourteen

Bolsheviks at the First Congress of Peasant Soviets. At the beginning of June,

285 SRs, 248 Mensheviks and only 105 Bolsheviks attended the First All-Russian

Congress of Soviets.

The First World War had caused Mensheviks and SRs to

split between internationalists, who refused to support either side in the war,

and defencists, who believed that an Allied victory would represent a triumph

of democracy over Austro-German militarism. Tsereteli’s policy of ‘revolu-

tionary defencism’ did something to heal the rift in the Menshevik Party, but

the decision to join the coalition opened up new divisions. From summer L.

Martov, leader of the internationalist wing, advocated the creation of a purely

socialist government and the imposition of direct state controls on industry.

But the centre-right insisted that there was no alternative to a coalition with

34 RexA.Wade,The Russian Revolution, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2000), ch. 3; Ziva Galili, A. P. Nenarokov et al. (eds.), Men’sheviki v 1917 godu, vol. i: Ot

fevralia do iul’skikh sobytii (Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1994), pp. 55–70.

35 Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Councils, 1905–21

(New York: Pantheon, 1974), pp. 121–3.

123

s. a. smith

the ‘bourgeoisie’ given that socialism was not yet feasible in Russia. It is difﬁcult

to estimate the number of Mensheviks, since many provincial organisations

of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party had declined to split into

Menshevik and Bolshevik factions.

By May there may have been as many

as 100,000, half of them in Georgia, the faction’s stronghold; this probably

rose to nearly 200,000 by autumn, only to fall to 150,000 by December. Intel-

lectuals dominated the leadership of the Mensheviks, but its members were

overwhelmingly workers.

The SRs were the largest political party in 1917. In spring they had about half

a million members, which rose to 700,000 by autumn (including Left SRs).

They were seen as the party of the peasantry, since they had invested much

energy into organising the villages in 1905–7, but they also had a strong base

in the factories and armed forces.

The February Revolution exacerbated

divisions within the party. Viktor Chernov, leader of the centrist majority,

approved the policy of coalition on the grounds that it would increase the

inﬂuence of the ‘democracy’ within government. He took up the post of

minister of agriculture and was active in preparing land redistribution, but

his support for legality and ‘state-mindedness’ alienated him from the party’s

peasant base. The Left SRs, who were hostile to the ‘imperialist’ war, began to

crystallise as a distinct faction in May; they supported the peasants’ seizure of

landowners’ estates and favoured a homogeneous socialist government rather

than a coalition with the ‘bourgeoisie’. Their inﬂuence grew, and by autumn

a majority of party organisations in the provinces had come out in favour of

soviet power.

On 3 April, V. I. Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland. Apart from a

six-month stay in 1905–6, he had been away from his native land for almost

seventeen years and his record as a revolutionary was largely one of failure.

Yet his hatred of liberalism and parliamentarism, his implacable opposition to

36 Ziva Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political

Strategies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

37 Z. Galili et al. (eds.), Men’sheviki v 1917 godu, vol. ii: Ot Iul’skikh sobytii do kornilovskogo

miatezha (Moscow: Progress-Akademiia, 1995), pp. 48–9; V. I. Miller, ‘K voprosu o sravni-

tel’noi chislennosti partii bol’shevikov i men’shevikov v 1917 g.’, Voprosy istorii KPSS 12

(1988): 118 (109–118).

38 Astrakhan, Bol’sheviki,p.233.

39 The following is based on O. H. Radkey, The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1958); Melancon, Socialist Revolutionaries; Sarah Badcock,

‘ “We’re for the Muzhiks’ Party!”: Peasant Support for the Socialist Revolutionary Party

During 1917’, Europe–Asia Studies 53, 1 (2001): 133–49.

40 The following is based on Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Life, vol. ii: Worlds in Collision

(London: Macmillan, 1991); James D. White, Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution

(London: Palgrave, 2001); Beryl Williams, Lenin (Harlow: Longman, 2000).

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The Revolutions of 1917–1918

the ‘imperialist’ war and his appreciation of the mass appeal of soviets oriented

him well to the new conditions in Russia. Prior to his return, the Bolshevik

Party was also divided, the return of L. B. Kamenev and Joseph Stalin from

Siberian exile having committed it to qualiﬁed support for the Provisional Gov-

ernment, a revolutionary defencist position on the war and to negotiations

with the Mensheviks to reunify the RSDRP. In his April Theses Lenin fulmi-

nated against these policies, insisting that there could be no support for the

government of ‘capitalists and landlords’, that the character of the war had not

changed, and that the Bolsheviks should campaign for power to be transferred

to a state-wide system of soviets. The war had convinced Lenin that capital-

ism was bankrupt and that socialism was now on the agenda internationally.

L. D. Trotsky welcomed his conversion to a view that the revolution in Russia

could trigger international socialist revolution. Though more uniﬁed polit-

ically than the other socialist parties, the Bolsheviks nevertheless remained

rather diverse; the more moderate views of Kamenev or G. E. Zinoviev con-

tinued to command support, so that key committees like those in Moscow and

Kiev would oppose the plan to seize power in October.

Owing to wartime

repression, the number of Bolsheviks may have fallen as low as 10,000, but in

the course of 1917 tens of thousands of workers, soldiers and sailors ﬂooded

into the party, knowing little Marx but seeing in the Bolsheviks the most com-

mitted defenders of their class interests. By October party membership had

risen to at least 350,000.

Six Mensheviks and SRs entered the government on 5 May, believing that

their action would hasten the advent of peace. Almost immediately, they

became involved in Kerensky’s preparations for a new military offensive. This

was motivated by his desire to see Russia honour her treaty obligations to the

Allies and be guaranteed a place in the comity of democratic states. Keren-

sky toured the fronts, frenetically whipping up support for an offensive. On

18–19 July only forty-eight battalions refused to go into battle, but most had

rallied for the last time. The offensive was a ﬁasco and led to about 150,000

losses and a larger number of deserters.

In its wake the Russian army unrav-

elled as soldiers despaired of seeing an end to the bloodshed, grew angry at

the unequal burden of sacriﬁce and determined to lay hands on gentry estates.

41 Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organizational Change, 1917–

1923 (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 56.

42 Miller, ‘K voprosu’, p. 118.

43 Figes, People’s Tragedy,p.408; Velikaia oktiabr’skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia: entsiklo-

pediia (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1987), p. 208.

125